PENANG: SEMICON Southeast Asia 2022 (SEMICON SEA 2022), the region's premier event for the global electronics manufacturing and design supply chain, will be returning to Penang from June 21 – 23 and will welcome in-person delegates and attendees for the first time in over 2 years. The event will be held at the Setia SPICE Arena & Convention Centre.
BOTs talked to ViTrox Technologies Sdn Bhd's Business Development , senior director Leong Chee Yeong on the state of SME technology adoption in Malaysia.
Q: What are among the challenges SMEs face in adopting new technologies today?
A: SMEs usually have limited talent resources looking into today's talent hungry and shortages across various industries esp in software engineering. So with the resources they have, it is easier for them to adopt Cloud based tech (similar to renting a house and get used to it first before purchasing the house as a long term commitment). While adopting Cloud, they can experience the digitalisation process, continuous training for the staff by upskilling and reskilling and have a positive culture buildup along with the digitalisation process for long term sustainability. Once the people are somewhat familiar with digital transformation and a positive culture has begun to emerge, the SME company can then look into more permanent solutions to establish longer term infrastructure including servers, in house maintenance and development teams.
2. What's delaying SMEs from adopting technology?
A: Within the 3 years of setting up a new team to go beyond the electronics industry, we have done many efforts together with other industry movers and government agencies by promoting IR4.0 through events, talks, webinars and promotions. many SME leaders, bosses, head of departments and employees have participated in countless events of sharing. So what is delaying them from adopting tech? Let me summarise it in 4 contexts.
(i) Important but Not Urgent and some even said Not Important, Not Urgent
(ii) Second generation of business leaders/owners are more receptive to new changes and wants to make a positive change for their product lines or manufacturing capability
(iii) is there a grant available and can I get the grant fully and fast?
(iv) my business is still ok and my competitor next door still using the same method
3. What can industry players do to help SMEs scale up their tech adoption?
A: Industry players who have done and walked the digitalisation path should provide assistance for the SMEs in their field of subject matter experts as a guiding point or inspiration. Some can be platform or software provision either in services or training or both whichever is suited for the industry needs. The experience in digitalisation is valuable as any company embarking on this will have to go through the learning process where these are the most costly, especially when desired results are not met in the initial stages. Therefore SMEs can leverage the experience gained and speed up the adoption cycle.
4. What sort of technologies are key to today's SMEs?
According to the recent survey from NanoMalaysia, CREST and Akademi Sains Malaysia, for SMEs technologies in the area of Digital Manufacturing Process is the key to solve these 10 pain points;
(i) lack of connectivity
(ii) high cost of technology migration
(iii) bridging technology and information between SMEs and MNCs (iv) connecting and digitalising legacy systems
(v) digital production and IoT software systems
(vi) automate the manual handling and processes
(vii) cost-effective and adequate digital solutions
(ix) telecommunication infrastructure and implement the IoT
(x) open source digital platforms
4. How best can SMEs adopt these technologies?
SMEs that have not gone through the process of Value Stream Mapping can seek for external parties to do a VSM from end to end for them to identify bottlenecks and areas of key implementations step by step. Thereafter they can ask the questions of should they do on their own or outsource partially or fully.